Video of the attack before dawn showed the charred rubble of buildings in the small town of Serhiivka, located about 50 kilometers (31 miles) southwest of Odessa. The office of the Ukrainian president announced that three X-22 missiles fired by Russian bombers hit an apartment building and two campsites. “A terrorist country is killing our people. “In response to the defeats on the battlefield, civilians are fighting,” said Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Large numbers of civilians were killed in Russian strikes and bombings earlier in the war, including in a hospital, a theater used as a bomb shelter and a train station. Until this week, massive civilian casualties seemed to be becoming rarer as Moscow focused on occupying the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Asked about Friday’s strike, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peshkov reiterated Moscow’s claim that it did not target residential areas during the war, which is now in its fifth month. The Russian military is trying to hit ammunition depots, weapons repair factories and troop training facilities, he said. The Security Service of Ukraine announced that 19 people lost their lives, including two children. He said another 38 people, including six children and a pregnant woman, were being treated for injuries. Most of the victims were in the apartment building, Ukrainian emergency officials said. The airstrikes followed the withdrawal of Russian forces from Snake Island on Thursday, a move that was expected to reduce the threat to nearby Odessa, home to Ukraine’s largest port. The island is located along a busy shipping lane. Russia took over in the early days of the war with the apparent hope of using it as a landmark for an attack on Odessa. The Kremlin described the withdrawal of Russian troops from Snake Island as a “goodwill gesture” aimed at facilitating shipments of grain and other agricultural products to Africa, the Middle East and other parts of the world. The Ukrainian army claimed that a barrage of artillery and missiles had forced the Russians to flee in two small speedboats. The exact number of troops withdrawn was not disclosed. The island gained importance at the beginning of the war as a symbol of Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion. Ukrainian troops there have reportedly received a request from a Russian warship to surrender or be bombed. The answer is supposed to be, “Go (explosively) alone.” Zelensky said that although the withdrawal did not guarantee the security of the Black Sea region, it would “significantly reduce” Russian activities there. “Step by step, we will push (Russia) away from the sea, our land, our sky,” he said in his overnight speech. In eastern Ukraine, Russian forces continued to push to encircle the last stronghold of the resistance in Luhansk, one of the two provinces that make up the Donbas region. Moscow-backed separatists have controlled much of the region for eight years. Luhansk Governor Sergie Haidai said the Russians were trying to encircle the city of Lyskhansk and were fighting for control of an oil refinery on the outskirts of the city. “The bombing of the city is very intense,” Haidai told the Associated Press. “The occupiers are destroying one house after another with heavy artillery and other weapons. “Residents of Lysychansk hide in the basement almost 24 hours a day.” The attack has so far failed to cut off Ukraine’s supply lines, although the main highway leading west was not used due to continued Russian bombing, the governor said. “Evacuation is impossible,” he added. However, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Friday that Russian separatist forces and Luhansk separatists had taken control of the refinery as well as a mine and a gelatin plant in Lysychansk “for the past three days”. The Ukrainian presidential office said a series of Russian raids in the past 24 hours had also killed civilians in eastern Ukraine – four in the northeastern Kharkiv region and four more in the Donetsk region. In other news, Zelensky urged Ukrainian lawmakers to swiftly review legislation needed to bring the country into the European Union. His government applied for EU membership after Russia invaded on February 24th. EU leaders nominated Ukraine for membership last week, acting with unusual speed and unity. The process could take years or even decades, but Zelensky told lawmakers in a speech that Ukraine could not wait. “It took us 115 days to receive candidate status in the EU. Our journey to full membership should not take decades,” he said. “You may know that some of your decisions will not be met with applause, but such decisions are necessary for Ukraine to move forward and you must take them.” In Moscow on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin briefed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the conflict in Ukraine. A Kremlin statement said Putin had accused the Zelensky government and Western supporters of Ukraine of trying to “escalate the crisis and halt efforts to resolve it politically and diplomatically.” Putin denied that Russian forces had targeted a shopping mall where Ukrainian authorities said a rocket attack on Monday had killed at least 19 people and injured 62 others. a nearby weapons depot and that the Russian army is not targeting civilian-occupied areas.
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